“Though the old-fashioned wish of a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year would now be after date, it is not too late to express a wish that God’s blessing may be with you and yours in this year and in all the years that shall follow it, and that His special mercy may protect you, whatever evils this nation may be afflicted with.
“Lord Althorpe thinks the arrival of the cholera is the greatest national calamity that could befall us; this he says, because being Chancellor of the Exchequer, he dreads the effect which an extended quarantine must produce upon the revenue; and truly, after the experiments in free trade, and the repeal of taxes which has cut down the national income without affording the slightest perceptible relief to any portion of the people, he may apprehend this consequence.
“It is many years ago, long before the Colloquies were begun, that the
likelihood of a visitation of pestilence occurred to me, when thinking of the
condition of this country and the ways of Providence. Considering the condition
of the poor, the miserable population which the manufacturing system had
collected in great bodies, and the zeal with which the
| Ætat. 58. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 175 |
“The possibility of such a political crisis as the present was never in my thoughts. Who, indeed, could have dreamt that we should ever have a Ministry who would call in the mob for the purpose of subverting the constitution! The fearful question which a few months must resolve is, whether pestilence will arrest the progress of revolution, or accelerate it, by making the populace desperate. Nothing can more dangerously tend to make them so than the opinion which is given in all the newspapers that it is a disease from which the more fortunate classes seem to be exempt; and that unclean habits, crowded habitations, and poor diet render men peculiarly liable to it.
“10th. On the morning after I had written the above, the Ballot for January 1. was sent me, where in the leading article, ——, by whom it is edited, endeavours to excite the populace by means of the cholera, telling them that they and they alone are the marked victims of this pestilence; and that it is oppression which has made them so I and that the rich are safe, because they are rich, and have all the comforts of life!
“The King I am told, will make as many peers as his
Ministers choose; and nothing then remains for us but to await the course of
revolution. I shall not live to see what sort of edifice will be constructed
out of the ruins; but I shall go to rest in the sure
| 176 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 58. |
“My tenderest regards to your dear mother, and those of my fireside to you and yours.
“God bless you, my dear friend!
